Thank you for joining Knockout 9 (or "K9"). I am happy that we are going to have this excellent competition this year! Knockout event is tradicional, and deserves respect! Please have fun and remember it's only a gathering of many people with the same hobby... electronic game players! Sportsmanship is the key! Have fun!

The coordinator is TRB_MetroidTeam, with the acceptance of Zhorik / George Strain (election coordinator). If there are decisions that I consider I can't do alone, or if there are technical or behaviour issues that I prefer talk with other members, it will be addressed to other MARP tradicional members (that are not involved with the decision/issue). At my preference considering MARP "structures" and MAME knowledge, I would try to ask firstly these guys: Zhorik, mahlemiut, Phil Lamat, Barthax, Chad/Skito and/or Zwaxy.

Considering I will not be able to confirm all the INPs, I will let the players naturally watch, confirm and point any "illegality" related to K9 rules and MARP rules. If you have doubts or issues, feel free to post in the forum, or PM me if really necessary. Regular MARP guidelines and rules will be used, except if otherwise noted.

K9 does NOT have important changes related to K8 rules, except in the format of the rounds. K9 general rules include:

THE GENERAL RULES:

- You need to play and record using only one credit. Continues are not allowed. Start a 2nd game in the same INP is not allowed. Also disallowed: auto-fire/turbo, pause, slowdown, throttling, cheats, macros, button mapping, re-recording, etc (PS.: WolfMAME version generally disallow most of them).

- You need to submit your ZIP file (please be sure to include both files (WLF and INP) if you use 0.106 version, and only INP file if you use 0.143(Edit: 0.140)) to MARP site. If MARP is down for an extended period of time, we will accept submissions via forum attachments on the thread for that week's game. Please do not submit recordings to the forum if MARP is not down. Another exception for submitting via forum is when the player is submitting a INP with lower score that his current score on MARP. In this situation, the player can submit via forum, or change to zero his previous score, it's his choice.

- Unless otherwise noted, all games are to be played on the default settings. If you're not sure your settings are default, delete the game's corresponding .CFG file from the "cfg" directory. Although they are usually accepted at MARP, recordings on "harder" settings will not be permitted for this tournament. If the game uses a bios file, please make sure that it too is set to "default", playing on a different bios can lead to playback problems and sometimes results in changes to gameplay as well.

- You need to submit in less than 48 hours after the playing/recording. If you are in the last day of the round (time left of the round is less than 24 hours), the record must be uploaded in less than 24 hours after the playing/recording.

- You need to submit before the round end (deadline), that will be determined in the beginning to each round. The general deadline time will be 23:59:59 GMT, and MARP time will be the official reference (also forum time, if applied). Regular uploading of scores is strongly encouraged to make more interesting competition.

- It's required to add "K9" (no spaces, only the letter and the number) in the beginning of your comment. It's not required, however it would be appreciatted if you write in the comment some informations like "stage reached", etc.

- You can play and record as many times as you want. Also, there is no limit to the number of times you may submit on a round, as long as your new recording is a higher score than the previous recording.

- Average recorded speed must be 95% or higher, except if there are a different note in that round (a higher %, for example). Recordings with unstable speed will not be accepted too, also recordings with much more than 100%. Use frameskip if you must.

- If only a few people can playback your recording, be careful, your score can be disqualified. If only you can playback your recording, your score will not be accepted. To help ensure that your recordings will work, please make sure that you delete/disable your NVRAM directory, and in the case of Neo-Geo games, delete/disable your memcard directory as well.

- If the records are tied, the player who submitted earlier will have preference. In a head-to-head match, if both players did not submit during the round, the player best placed in Round 1 will have preference. If none played Round 1, the player best placed in the previous round will have preference. If the tie persists, Player 1 will have preference (the bracket determines who is Player 1).

THE FORMAT:

- The focus of K9 will be the head-to-head matches, according to the name of the competition. This year Knockout will be Double Elimination format. Considering the end of the year and the holidays, we will not have the "free-day" between rounds, and most of the rounds will be 6 days longer.

- Considering Double Elimination generally is a bit longer than Single Elimination, K9 will have only one "qualifying round", that will be called "Round 1". All the Round 1 players will pass to Round 2. Round 1 will be mainly to seed players for the next rounds. Round 2 will be the 1st head-to-head round.

- For "late players" (or “newcomers”) that didn't play Round 1, they will be allowed to join in Round 2, however, the hard part is that they will enter in special matches, not head-to-head (2 players) match, however in "head-to-head-to-head" (3 players) matches against some of the worst placed in Round 1. Depending of the number of players in Round 1, and the number of players that want to join in Round 2, it's possible we have some "4 players matches". We will try to fit these special matches in a way to not affect players best placed in Round 1. Details to be decided according to the number of players involved in.

- We will call "slots" the positions where are the possibility of new players enter. Players that want to enter in Round 2 need to post your interest publicly in the forum related to that Round 2, or submit a record to that game with “K9” in the description. The time limit to post that you are interested is 48 hours (2 days) after the beginning of the round, and it’s required to submit the first INP in the time limit of 72 hours (3 days) after the beginning of the round. Chronological sequence will be considered, or by “lottery” if it seems necessary.

- Also to be decided yet, is the possibility of late players joining in Round 3, however in the losers bracket. To be decided!

- And to avoid a very long tournament, and to avoid winners bracket players need to wait (free round), a change will be done to the regular Double Elimination format. I will post some brackets to explain better soon, however it consists of some "3 players matches" in the losers bracket. If we use a 64 players double elimination bracket, we will have 3 rounds with this situation, that would result in 4 rounds shorter than the regular Double Elimination format. We will have a total of 9 rounds ("Round 1" + 8 "head-to-head rounds"), instead of 13 rounds ("Round 1" + 12 "head-to-head rounds").

- If we have more than 64 players in Round 1, then Round 2 will be adjusted with some "3P matches" too (the regular "128 players double elimination brackets" will be used to try balance the seeding during these adjustments). And if we have "slots" for "late players" in Round 2, probably they will play against players in the 65th position or worst. It will be harder, because only the 1st placed (out of 3 players of that match) will advance in the winners bracket, and the other 2 will be knocked-down to the losers, probably playing again a "3P match" there. Well, it's all to encourage players to get good records in Round 1

- If we have less than 64 players in Round 1 (and more than 48 players), we will not have "free round" (or "bye") for the best placed in Round 1. The brackets will be adjusted to we have a "3P match", however in the end of Round 2 the top 2 (instead of only the top 1) players will advance, and the 3rd placed will go down to the losers bracket.

- If we have 48 players or less in Round 1, we will change from "64 players double elimination brackets" to "32 players double elimination brackets" as base for the matches, using the similar format and rules as priorly.

- And about the Final Round, due to the Double Elimination rule, if the player that came from the Winners Bracket win the round, this player will be the champion. If the player that came from the Losers Bracket win the round, it's necessary an extra round (7 days long, from 25 December 2011 until 31 December 2011), with a different game, to finally know the champion of the competition. Considering this extra game probably will be played after Christmas holiday, and in the final week of the year, we can consider the situation of move this extra week round to 02 January 2012 until 08 January 2011 (7 days long) only in the case that both finalists agree with this change.